Search Results for: CO2

Time to Step Up: Commit to 1.5°C

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The scale of the climate crisis is more visible than ever. Not only has it been clearly articulated by the world’s leading climate scientists, communities around the world are suffering more frequent, extreme and widespread storms, heat waves and wildfires.

But it’s not enough.

We need to progress faster towards the ultimate goal of net-zero CO2 emissions if we are to prevent the very worst impacts of climate change.

This is the moment for us all to push for greater progress. All businesses – especially those that to date have been silent on the threat of climate change – need to step-up their ambition and actions to tackle climate change.

We’re calling on all companies that haven’t yet done so to commit to set an ambitious science-based emission reduction target that’s aligned with what science says is necessary to limit global warming to 1.5°C. Signal your commitment to setting your company target by signing this pledge: https://www.unglobalcompact.org/docs/…

We Mean Business is a coalition of organizations working with thousands of the world’s most influential businesses and investors. These businesses recognize that the transition to a low carbon economy is the only way to secure sustainable economic growth and prosperity for all. To accelerate this transition, we have formed a common platform to amplify the business voice, catalyze bold climate action by all, and promote smart policy frameworks.

The Battle Against Climate Change by Paul Kingsnorth

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Humanity has lost the battle against climate change. That is what Paul Kingsnorth thinks. The former environmental activist believes that we can’t stop climate change anymore. How should we live on knowing that climate change is a fact that can’t be denied anymore? A documentary that gives thinker and writer Paul Kingsnorth the time to explain how humanity still can be hopeful although the battle against climate change in his eyes has been lost.

Former environmental activist and writer Paul Kingsnorth has withdrawn to Ireland on a unspoilt part of the earth. You could say that he lives now at the end of the world. A portrait of an end-time thinker who nevertheless does not give up hope and continues to believe in the power of nature.

Thinker and writer Paul Kingsnorth stood early on the barricades as a conservationist. He resisted the insatiable hunger of the globalized world for more land, resources and things in England and on the other side of the world in Papa New Guinea. Kingsnorth was one of the leaders of the environmental movement and reached a large international audience with its passionate speeches. But at some point, he came to terms that he had to revisit his belief that humanity could save the world.

In his bundled essays “Confessions of a recovering environmentalist” (2017) he describes how some weak-kneed accountants of this world hollowed out the green movement from the inside and exchanged the barricades for ties and conference tables. Limiting CO2 emissions became the new gospel because it was measurable and countable. But according to Kingsnorth, that is an illusion. He thinks that in his victory rush, the green movement of today exchanges the remaining wild nature for a wind or solar panel farm. The battle is lost.

Kingsnorth withdrew with his family to the Irish countryside to live self-sufficient. He founded the “Dark Mountain Project” in which writers, poets and artists are looking for a different view of the end of the world, based on the connection between man and nature. He exchanged his clenched fist and protesting voice for an inner, literary search for the question of what makes us human and what our place is on this magical planet.

Original titel: De aarde draait door
Originally broadcasted by VPRO in 2018. © VPRO Backlight December 2018.